posted at 10:10 am on April 19, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with Boston police earlier this morning, perhaps killed by bullets, his own IED, or the fact that his brother Dzhokar reportedly drove over him in order to plow through a police barricade after the shootout. He will live on in a photo essay taken when he competed in Golden Glove boxing, thanks to photographer Johannes Hirn, linked by an alert Dave Weigel a few minutes ago. The accompanying interview raised at least a yellow flag about the isolation of Tsarnaev from his community in the essay titled “Will Box for Passport”:

Tamerlan, who studies at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and wants to become an engineer, took the semester off from school to train for the competition.

Tamerlan fled Chechnya with his family because of the conflict in the early 90s, and lived for years in Kazakhstan before getting to the United States as a refugee.

Originally from Chechnya, but living in the United States since five years, Tamerlan says: “I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them.”

If he wins enough fights… Tamerlan says he could be selected for the US Olympic team and be naturalized American. Unless his native Chechnya becomes independent, Tamerlan says he would rather compete for the United States than for Russia.

Tamerlan says he doesn’t drink or smoke anymore: “God said no alcohol.” A muslim, he says: “There are no values anymore,” and worries that “people can’t control themselves.”

Accordingly, Weigel and others claim that this is Tsarnaev’s YouTube channel (which I already posted in the main thread). It’s not confirmed, and there may well be more than one Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but if it’s his, a certain theme emerges almost immediately. It’s odd that Tsarnaev wanted to compete for the US rather than Kazakhstan, perhaps, where he might have fit in better; if this really is his YouTube account, it’s even more odd.

Update: Some are claiming that this is Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Amazon wish list. I’d approach this with a grain of salt, but again if so, it’s certainly interesting. Quite a few items on making fake IDs, but they’ve all been on the list for almost six years. Not sure if I’m buying this.

Update: More from the AP on the background of both brothers, including this tidbit, emphasis mine:

In May of 2011, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, then a senior at a prestigious high school, was awarded a $2,500 scholarship from the city of Cambridge, Mass., to pursue higher education. Now, Tsarnaev is on the run, described as “armed and dangerous” and suspected of the Boston Marathon bombing. …

According to the website spotcrime.com, Tamerlan was arrested for domestic violence in July 2009, after assaulting his girlfriend.

He was an amateur boxer, listed as a competitor in a National Golden Gloves competition in 2009.

Assuming that boxing profile preceded the arrest, that might be an inflection point for Tamerlan’s radicalization.

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev posted links to Islamic websites and others calling for Chechen independence on what appears to be his page on a Russian language social networking site.

Abusive comments in Russian and English were flooding onto Tsarnaev’s page on VK, a Russian-language social media site, on Friday after he was identified as a suspect in the bombing of the Boston marathon. …

His “World view” is listed as “Islam” and his “Personal priority” is “career and money”.

He has posted links to videos of fighters in the Syrian civil war and to Islamic web pages with titles like “Salamworld, my religion is Islam” and “There is no God but Allah, let that ring out in our hearts”.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26 year-old brother of the second Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had a YouTube page where he posted religious videos, including a video of Feiz Mohammad, afundamentalist Australian Muslim preacher who rails against the evils of Harry Potter. Among those videos is one dedicated to the prophecy of the Black Banners of Khurasan which is embraced by Islamic extremists—particularly Al Qaeda. The videos posted on what appears to be Tsarnaev’s YouTube page may shed light on the motivations for the attack on the Boston Marathon. The prophecy states that an invincible army will come from the region of “Khurasan,” a large portion of territory in central Asia.

“This is a major hadith (reported saying of the prophet Muhammad) that jihadis use, it is essentially an end-time prophecy,” says Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy “This is definitely important in Al Qaeda’s ideology.” In The Black Banners, former FBI agent Ali Soufan’s book about his pursuit of Al Qaeda that is named after this prophecy, Soufan describes the prophecy this way:

Khurasan is a term for a historical region spanning northeastern and eastern Iran and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and northwestern Pakistan. Because of the hadith, jihadists believe that this is the region from which they will inflict a major defeat against their enemies—in the Islamic version of Armageddon…

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Our immigration policies suck…someone get hold of Rubio and the repubs and tell them that this has to be part of the conversation. Our borders are porous….send them back, shut them down..deal with it….we have no clue how many of these killers are among us…..

Let’s hope this kills the “immigration reform” sell-out about to come before Congress. We should be deporting third-world trash…not legalizing them.

cajunpatriot on April 19, 2013 at 9:11 AM

On the contrary. Let’s use this attack by Islamic terrorists here as resident aliens to broaden the debate over immigration reform. The Junta of Ocho and Hispanic activists have made the debate all about fast-tracking citizenship for the illegals. Well, this is a huge part of our immigration policies too. That point can’t be emphasized enough. If we are to engage in immigration reform it needs to be all inclusive and not giving resident status to the illegals.

Funny, that’s not the attitude I see here with all the endless kvetching about ‘takers’,’ dumb voters’ etc. Leave if you don’t like it.lostmotherland on April 19, 2013 at 9:13 AM

The point is that we working stiffs don’t like you moochers. And we don’t like immigrants that want to turn our homeland into a cesspool like the country they left. Funny thing is the two brothers would just as soon kill you, their fan, as they would anyone else.

Our immigration policies suck…someone get hold of Rubio and the repubs and tell them that this has to be part of the conversation. Our borders are porous….send them back, shut them down..deal with it….we have no clue how many of these killers are among us…..

Funny, that’s not the attitude I see here with all the endless kvetching about ‘takers’,’ dumb voters’ etc. Leave if you don’t like it.

lostmotherland on April 19, 2013 at 9:13 AM

Funny I was born here, raised here, have lived my entire life here, obey the laws, pay my taxes, pay any fines, and yet am STILL attacked by individuals who want the government to do more while I just want it out of my life.

Those trying to change me, interfere with my life, and turn my law abiding nature and support of natural rights into criminal activities: I want those people to stop, leave me alone or just plain leave to a land that has all those features built-in where they will be more happy with their wants and desires catered to and their freedoms absent.

If you don’t like America and her people: leave.
Funny, that’s not the attitude I see here with all the endless kvetching about ‘takers’,’ dumb voters’ etc. Leave if you don’t like it.
lostmotherland on April 19, 2013 at 9:13 AM

There’s no where else to go. But there’s plenty of other countries to be a jihadist and celebrate Allah by killing each other.

Oh no, oh no – Chris Matthews is probably having a hissie
fit…… The bombers are radical Islamists….
I don’t think they are Tea Party members.
Border security should be the top priority.
Shut down immigration reform NOW…..

And years in Kazakhstan? Not to make light of this, but this guy is reminding me of Borat. It’s gotta be tough to identify these terrorist when they only have one thing in common.

forest on April 19, 2013 at 9:01 AM

That is the strongest thing that makes me think that this is some bigger group involvement. They tried to look Americanized and the younger one looked like a parody of an American teenager. Furthermore, we have heard how terrorist groups have been trying to make bombers look more American and less Muslim.

Non citizens who commit crimes should be deported. I don’t care if they have a green card.

Wigglesworth on April 19, 2013 at 9:05 AM

Totally agree. It’ll be interesting to find out how this guy got his green card to begin with. Probably thanks to that wonderful ‘diversity lottery’. Now there’s a racket if ever I saw one. Nice starting point for some meaningful spending cuts, along with chain migration and welfare benefits for these people.

Funny, that’s not the attitude I see here with all the endless kvetching about ‘takers’,’ dumb voters’ etc. Leave if you don’t like it.

lostmotherland on April 19, 2013 at 9:13 AM

Geez, what difference could there possibly be? One guy from a Godforsaken ‘country’ in the Caucasus who has no natural ties to the US whatsoever, the other a loyal citizen whose only wish is for our government not to interfere in his and his fellow citizens’ daily lives, and whose ancestors presumably made this country the greatest in the world. Sorry, I see no difference here. Let’s tell both to take a hike if they don’t like our country.

Tamerlan says he doesn’t drink or smoke anymore: “God said no alcohol.” A muslim, he says: “There are no values anymore,” and worries that “people can’t control themselves.”

I was listening to NPR this morning and this article was referenced but they did not state that Tamerlan was a muslim, in fact they SPECIFICALLY stated they did not know if he was a muslim.

Liars.

They referenced that he did not drink or smoke. However, they did not go to the next sentence in the article to see that the killer was a muslim? The lengths the left will go to to obscure the truth when it does not fit their narrative is astounding.

I’m with you. I’m sick of interfering Liberals demanding their policy preferences be imposed on the rest of us. My brand of conservatism can be summed up simply as “Leave me alone!”

Charlemagne on April 19, 2013 at 9:28 AM

I would be a Jeffersonian.

I believe in the right to keep and bear arms being the source of freedom and our natural right to enforce such freedom. That makes me a Jacksonian.

I’m a nice man, don’t want to make trouble and all I ever, simply, ask: is never bring a fight to me for my life, my liberty or my freedom or you WILL live to regret it. That is my promise. Why that sounds like a threat to the Leftists is beyond me.

They tried to look Americanized and the younger one looked like a parody of an American teenager. Furthermore, we have heard how terrorist groups have been trying to make bombers look more American and less Muslim.

Deval Patrick is actually giving a sane press conference, good for him. In New York they would be demanding that everyone lay in the street naked to be searched and that all conservatives should be herded onto trains for security reasons.

Deval Patrick is actually giving a sane press conference, good for him. In New York they would be demanding that everyone lay in the street naked to be searched and that all conservatives should be herded onto trains for security reasons.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews isn’t the only one weeping in despair that it’s not a WASP railing about gun control but the usual Muslim foreigner. Salon.com’s David Sirota was ranting about how this had something to do with white privilege. Doubtless a cloud of gloom is enveloping the White House.

Our immigration policies suck…someone get hold of Rubio and the repubs and tell them that this has to be part of the conversation. Our borders are porous….send them back, shut them down..deal with it….we have no clue how many of these killers are among us…..

[crosshugger on April 19, 2013 at 9:11 AM]

Come on. This case doesn’t really follow the issue that the borders are porous, but it does follow the issue that our legal immigration policies need some good attention. But we knew that from 911.

This is just a guess but I’m thinking these family got the break to move here as a result of the the diplomatic dealings with Kazakhstan as it related to the war in Afghanistan. I know we were interested in getting an air base there for a few years, but IIRC, that fell through. But with that strategic diplomatic warming comes all sorts of other relations getting put on the table. Why it might even include taking a bothersome group of refugees of the hands of one partner in the relationship or the other.

In any case, with our on again off again relationship with Russia, anything could have set these two off. Heck, we might find the inflection point was actually something better described as an “Overcharge” button.

Assuming that boxing profile preceded the arrest, that might be an inflection point for Tamerlan’s radicalization.

How is following and promoting your religion considered “radicalization”? These fellas have earned their seats in the great sky whorehouse of Islam. They are Muslim heroes, not “radicals”. What’s next, calling them AL_Q affiliates with no connections to Saudi or the “real” Islam of peace and tolerance?

Once again the media will slime and slime the opponents of The Party and once they find out they are once again Islamic terrorists they will cover up that fact, up play the ‘white man’ angle and then blame the right for these Islamic attacks.